From Genes to Environment: Using Integrative Genomics to Build a “Systems‐Level” Understanding of Autism Spectrum Disorders

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are pervasive neurodevelopmental disorders that affect an estimated 1 in 110 individuals. Although there is a strong genetic component associated with these disorders, this review focuses on the multifactorial nature of ASD and how different genome‐wide (genomic) approaches contribute to our understanding of autism. Emphasis is placed on the need to study defined ASD phenotypes as well as to integrate large‐scale “omics” data in order to develop a “systems‐level” perspective of ASD, which in turn is necessary to allow predictions regarding responses to specific perturbations and interventions.     

Short Reports Examining the test: an evaluation of the police Standard Entrance Test in Scotland

This short report describes an evaluation of the instrument used for the selection of future police officers in Scotland – the Standard Entrance Test (SET). The study was commissioned by the Scottish Office and undertaken by the Scottish Council for Research in Education during 1995–6. The authors outline the project, report their main findings and identify groups which may have been disadvantaged. The outcome, a revised test, is currently being piloted with new entrants to the force.     

Reading disability in boys and girls: No evidence for a differential genetic etiology

In order to test the hypothesis that genetic influences are moreimportant as a cause of reading disability in girls than in boys,composite reading performance data from identical and fraternal twinpairs were analyzed using both concordance and multiple regressionmethods. The sample included 206 identical (99 male, 107 female), 159same-sex fraternal (90 male, 69 female), and 117 opposite-sex fraternaltwin pairs, in which at least one member of each pair had readingdifficulties. Although the difference between the concordance rates forreading disabilities in female identical and same-sex fraternal twinpairs was somewhat greater (65% for identical twins vs.32% for fraternal twins) than the difference in concordance ratesfor boys (68% vs. 39%), loglinear analysis of thesecategorical data revealed that the interaction between sex, zygosity,and concordance was not significant (p > 0.70). Moreover,the heritability of reading disability(h ² _g) estimated from regression analysisof the reading performance data in males was nearly identical to that infemales (h ² _g = 0.58 and 0.59,respectively; p > 0.90). Thus, results of this studyprovide little or no evidence for the hypothesis of greater geneticinfluence on reading difficulties in girls than in boys.     

ICTs in the Rush Hour of Life

In the Netherlands, many women have entered the labor market in the last two decades. This development - among other social changes - has resulted in substantial shifts in the time that Dutch people spend on paid labor and "caring tasks" on the one hand and leisure activities on the other hand. This task combination has caused serious time pressure and coordination problems among dual-income families with children. Therefore, it is not an exaggeration to label this stage of life as the "rush hour of life". In this article the findings of a small-scale qualitative case study among these "busy" households are presented. The objective of this study is to describe and analyze patterns of acceptance and use of information and communication technologies (ICTs), especially telecommunication technologies, in the context of the everyday life of these households. The question is raised whether ICTs can be a solution to time pressure and coordination problems. Theoretically, the research is rooted in a user-oriented perspective toward technological innovation, developed in the United Kingdom by Silverstone, Haddon, and others, which understands the incorporation of ICTs into the everyday life of households as a "domestication process". A paradoxical conclusion of this study is that ICTs are not explicitly perceived as solutions to the communication and coordination problems these households experience in everyday life, although they are being used for solving these problems. This ambiguity seems characteristic for the acceptance of ICTs in everyday life. The domestication concept is a useful concept to describe these ambivalent and paradoxical processes of (non)acceptance and use.     

Telling Truths: Wounded Truths and the Activity of Truth Telling

It appears that being young and queer seems to be all about woundedness: it means experiencing suffering, including the risk of suicide, increased drug use, homelessness and violence. Yet how are these wounded truths told, and further, why is it that people in education seem to tell them "unproblematically"? This paper considers these questions by analysing wounded truth telling in the recent debate over the Western Australia Lesbian and Gay Law Reform Bill. Using <citeref rid="b7">Foucault's (2001)</citeref> discussion of Greek parrhesia (truth telling), the Western Australian debate is analysed in terms of its problematisation of wounded truth telling. Questions are raised regarding the implications of unproblematised educational practices that engage in the telling of wounded truths.     

The Use of ICT in Education: a survey of schools in Europe

The Survey of Schools: ICT in education commissioned in 2011 by the European Commission took place between January 2011 and November 2012, with data collection in autumn 2011. This article presents the main findings of the Survey based on over 190,000 questionnaire answers from students, teachers and head teachers in primary, lower and upper secondary schools randomly sampled. The article details the analytical framework design and the survey methodology implemented. It then presents the main ‘state of the art’ indicators that have been built, concerning ICT infrastructure and access to it, frequency of students' ICT based activities during lessons, level of teachers' and students' confidence in their digital competences, their opinion about using ICT for teaching and learning, and the school strategies to support ICT integration in teaching and learning. The article also presents the main findings of the exploratory part of the analysis, introducing the concepts of digitally supportive school, digitally confident and supportive teacher and digitally confident and supportive student, estimating their respective proportion at EU level on average and by country and investigating whether high percentage of digitally supportive schools include high percentages of digitally confident and positive teachers and students. A few recommendations for policy making at European, national, regional/local and institutional levels conclude the article.     

Institutional complementarities: The origins of experimentation in China’s plug-in electric vehicle industry

A vast literature on technology transitions within industries suggests that early phases of new technologies are marked by periods of intense experimentation, but we know little about the conditions under which these periods emerge. We apply inductive, grounded theory-building techniques to examine what prompts firms to experiment across one emerging technology platform—plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs)—in China. Triangulating annual vehicle make and model sales data from 2003 to 2016 (plus monthly data from 2010 to 2016); 112 English and Mandarin archival documents from industry, academic, and news outlets; and 51 semi-structured interviews with industry, government, and academic stakeholders, we develop four in-depth case studies. We find that in contrast to the innovation trajectories of multinational and Chinese arms of joint venture (JV) firms, independent domestic Chinese firms (those with no history of international JV partnerships) are undertaking significant experimentation across multiple levels—infrastructure, core system, subsystem, and component—of the emerging PEV technology platform. We propose the concept of “institutional complementarities” to describe how interactions among institutions—here the national JV regulation and local market support and subsidies—may have turned regional markets into protected laboratories, extending the incubation periods for independent domestic firm experimentation. While this diverse experimentation may be an important antecedent of technology transition, consolidation induced by national policy standardization or competitive pressure may be required for PEV innovations to scale beyond their early, protected regional markets.     

Learning the rules of the game: The role of generic “you” and “we” in shaping children's interpretations of norms

A critical skill of childhood is learning social norms. We examine whether the generic pronouns “you” and “we,” which frame information as applying to people in general rather than to a specific individual, facilitate this process. In one pre-registered experiment conducted online between 2020 and 2021, children 4- to 9-year-old primarily living in the midwestern U.S. (N = 146, 75 girls, 71 boys, M_age = 7.14, SD = 1.69, 82% White) interpreted actions described with generic pronouns (vs. “I”) as normatively correct and selected the speaker who used generic pronouns as the rule-follower, particularly when generic pronouns were presented first. There were no significant effects of age. These results illustrate how generic pronouns influence how children discern unfamiliar norms and form interpersonal judgments.     

The Rouge Education Project: Challenges of Implementation

Abstract

The Rouge Education Project (REP) is a school-based environmental education program that uses water monitoring, telecommunications, and student actions to improve water quality. The author carried out a program evaluation to better understand the challenges generated by such a program. She examined surveys, interviews, and focus groups to determine the level of participation, goals, objectives, value of support services, and changes in teaching and environmental awareness. The results indicated that the REP met its goals of increasing awareness and concern about the Rouge River and developing a supportive curriculum in science classrooms. This article illustrates the importance of inservice workshops and curriculum resources for successful program enactment.